Sunday, July 24, 2011

Farming Dice

Here is another review of a game from the Board Game Geek solo P'n'P game design contest.Farming Dice is a euro style trading and worker allocation game, made by Chad Mestdagh. Game can be downloaded here.Player's goal is to make money by working on the farm. Farm consists of six land tiles that can take a role of field (where plants grow) or pasture (where cows roam).Dice are used to determine what goods can be grown on each land and what goods (and for what price) are requested by the market. Player starts with five dice, and 3 to 4 are needed to perform an action like planting a field, purchasing young cows or sell goods. Cows are especially important, although they grow slowly, and need 3 full turns before they can be sold. Their benefit is that, once sold, they bring additional die to player’s pool. With 6 dice you can start to think about performing two actions in the turn, even if you really need 8 to do it. And if you are really good, you might eventually find yourself with 12 dice, which will allow you to perform mighty 3 (and sometimes even 4) actions in a turn!So, player then chooses from available options taking into consideration not only financial aspect of his actions but also possibilities offered by many bonus abilities coming from planting specific plant or selling to specific market.Game lasts 15 turns, and level of victory is measured by the money earned after the last turn.Inexperience player will take around one hour to finish the game. But no one will stop with one game of Farming Dice. This is one of these addictive games, which will always call for you to try and make a better result than the one you did last time.As usual, I suggest printing 2 pages on 1 sheet of cardboard.If you like this game and want to try more games from the same author, check out Sunburst City Transport game here.